MrBeast‘s hometown NBA team will no longer display the name of his candy company. The Charlotte Business Journal has reported that MrBeast’s Feastables brand has ceased its sponsorship deal with the Charlotte Hornets after just one season.
In 2023, amid a bull market for creator-led consumables companies, MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) announced that a Feastables patch would appear on Hornets jerseys during the upcoming NBA season. On the other side of that season — which saw the Hornets finish 40 games under .500 — the landscape for creator brands looks a little different. A Hornets rep confirmed that Feastables will be removing its patch, leaving the team one sponsor short ahead of the start of the 2023-24 season.
There have also been big changes at the company now known as Beast Industries. The rapidly growing content empire is in the midst of an overseas push, and as a result, Donaldson seems to be looking beyond his home state.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
Back in May, Semafor reported that Donaldson had disagreements with management company Night about the direction of Feastables. After ending his exclusive relationship with the firm, the man known as MrBeast has more control over his chocolate bar line, and his decision to pull back the Hornets sponsorship suggests that he has his own ideas about the best ways to promote Feastables.
Because of their poor performance, the Hornets also clashed with Donaldson’s stated values. The YouTube star has sued former partner Virtual Dining Concepts, alleging that MrBeast Burger’s rapid expansion led to a drop in quality and tarnished the MrBeast image. If Donaldson applied the same logic to the Hornets deal, he couldn’t have been too happy about the link between Feastables and a basketball team that finished the season with a 21-61 record.
If Donaldson decides to seek a more high-profile partnership for Feastables (i.e. integration with a bigger sports franchise), he will likely have plenty of suitors. His branded videos routinely top our rankings and he just became the first creator with 300 million YouTube subscribers. There are plenty of NBA teams that could benefit from the MrBeast Bump should Donaldson decide to give the jersey patch idea one more try.
